The Collective Noun for a Group of Blogs is …
Well, what is it? Let’s examine the problem first.
Blogs are about exchanges of information on the raw and cutting edges. The raw edge is where there’s controversy, or avant-guarde thinking, in politics. The cutting edge is where there’s innovation in tech and new media.
Blogs are like the pamphlets and chapbooks that were handed out on the streets of London from the 16th century. Usually hurriedly-written and scrappily produced, they served a real need in London then, and a similar one now in our rapidly-changing world. But they’re not commercial publishing, they are vehicles for ideas.
Blogs are not good for ad-based commercial publishing. The people who matter don’t see them that way — and they are the buyers.
When blogs are networked as content providers they are mimicking print magazines (whether they know it or not) and straying beyond their point of maximum effectiveness. Unless, that is, they go the whole hog and badge themselves as magazines, and bring in the publishing values of the print serial industry. Then they can approach the kind of advertisers who dominate printed magazines.
The difference between monetized blogs, based on Adsense, and commercial publishing is profound. The former is someone earning money (occasionally, quite a lot) from drawing search traffic through the use of keywords. The latter is a company publishing high-quality content in a mature marketplace.
The problem is both with the blog form, which is useful for highly transient content, and the perception of blogs by businesses which advertise.
Our stretching of the envelope is actually just recognizing reality, for what is the exit stategy of most blog networks? What do they want to become? Just a bunch of blogs tied together by common ownership or webring? What kind of entity is that? A hybrid. Neither one thing nor the other.
So what is the collective noun for a group of blogs? “Network” tells us nothing, especially as the synergy between blogs is often non-existent.
I’d go for “a vacuum of blogs”.
See also “What on Earth is the Blogosphere?“
What about “Blogsopedia” an encyclopedia of blogs, blogozine?
“The latter is a company publishing high-quality content in a mature marketplace.”
Are you saying John that blogs don’t have quality content? Does “mature marketplace” mean “old school”.
Don’t we just change how they buyers look at blogs? Didn’t we go from black and white to color ads at some point? Technology changes and how the “quality content” is delivered. I’m failing to see the distinction in the advertising area. Don’t you adjust to fit the medium? Sure now they don’t get full page color ads, but maybe a pop-up or a link or a banner.
The only distinction I can see is that advertisers are not as apt to capture a niche market in blog networks, unless the network itself is a niche network. I am trying to get http://www.theparentsplanet.com off the ground and it would be a network solely with blogs about being a parent. Then I can get advertisers specific to that area to purchase the real estate they would have purchased in say Parents or Child magazines. I agree the synergy either exists or it doesn’t. If I own a child toy company I might not necessarily want ad space in the network about mobile technology. Great post, it made me actually have to think today!
By Jim Turner on September 28th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Thanks, Jim. It’s hard going for many businesses going from the stage of assembling blogs/sites under one roof, expecting economies of scale by selling ads from a single point, then realizing they have to go up another ladder to reach the point where advertisers will be interested in their inventory.
I know that a lot of people have invested heavily (timewise, at least) in blogs as inventory, and they’re giving me a lot of stick right now
. But I’m finding the word “blog” — when it’s understood — doesn’t have the ring of a real business model behind it. Blogging Scoble-style from a bigco is entirely different from making a business-level income from doing it.
My approach has been to drop the word blog and replace it with something that’s known to everyone on the planet: magazine — the French word for “shop” or “store”. Because that’s what it’s about : selling things by wrapping advertising around quality content. That’s the business model.
I think your parent-based network is a good idea. Were it mine, I’d erase all mention of blogs from reader-side.
By John Evans on September 29th, 2006 at 9:47 am
John, agreed. The word blog just screams amatuer journalism to the big money advertisers worth courting into a relationship with your network. Of course you must consider blog audience’s relative level of sophistication. One of my blogs is for music loving and unsigned bands, so the DIY blog ethos plays to that blog’s advantage and in fact imbues it with more street cred. As someone who likes to cover all his bases, I see no folly in producing a digital publication to supplement or filter blog high quality content. This is what I’ll be doing with my blog networks.
It’s been great watching you expand Syntama beyond a single source into an entire network of blogs.
Ty
By Tyler West on September 29th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Wow, could I have made more grammatical errors with that last post? =D
By Tyler West on September 29th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Thanks, Tyler.
As always, it’s horses for courses, different strokes for different folks. I’ve already mentioned that gadget blogs have a life of their own way beyond the blogosphere.
In other areas, though, blogs have a very limited reach, and that’s where we want to go.
By John Evans on September 29th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
I have to say the word ‘blog’ always makes me think of the lavatory. Obviously it’s deeply Freudian.
By Steve Newman on September 29th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Strange that, Steve, it always reminds me of peat fires. Jungian, I expect.
By John Evans on September 29th, 2006 at 6:47 pm